Legal

Terms and Conditions:

Unless you have been told otherwise (by means of an e-mail from The Sound Collectors’ Club (herein referred to as The S.C. Club)), you must pay a non-refundable £20 membership fee every year to The S.C. Club (as explained here on The S.C. Club’s website within the How to Share Sounds page) in order to have your uploaded audio accepted into any of the S.C. Club’s private sets within The S.C. Club’s Google Drive account.

Payment of the annual membership fee entitles you to:

1. Have your uploaded audio accepted into The S.C. Club (as long as the audio fulfils the criteria outlined in the ‘Audio Specifications’ section of this legal agreement) and added permanently (unless removed at The S.C. Club’s discretion or upon a specific request from you, the Contributor, via e-mail to The S.C. Club) to the appropriate private set within The S.C. Club’s Google Drive account.  Payment of the membership fee entitles you to access, via shared Google Drive folders (which you will be invited to join upon acceptance of your uploaded audio submission), to any of these private, themed sets, which contain audio that you have uploaded, for the duration of your membership of The S.C. Club.
2. Access to view and contribute (by means of an invitation that will be e-mailed to you by The S.C. Club shortly after payment of your membership fee) to The S.C. Club’s The Knowledge notebook (i.e.  The S.C. Club’s shared Evernote notebook) for the duration of your membership of The S.C. Club.
3. Access to view and participate (by means of an invitation that will be e-mailed to you by The S.C. Club shortly after payment of your membership fee) in the Club’s private Slack discussion group for the duration of your membership of The S.C. Club.

Payment of The S.C. Club’s annual membership fee entitles you to membership of The S.C. Club from the day your payment was accepted and confirmed by receipt, until the day you cancel the auto renewal of your annual fee payment, or until the S.C. Club cancels your membership at it’s own discretion. One year after your initial membership fee payment, your next year’s membership will auto-renew and that year’s fee will automatically be charged to the credit card you have provided details for.  This is necessary in order to continue to be able to have access to any private sets you have contributed audio to, to have your contributions accepted and to have access to any of the aforementioned exclusive members-only resources or facilities of The S.C. Club, i.e. ‘The Knowledge’ and the Slack discussion group.  You can cancel your membership at any time but you will instantly lose access to all these resources and access to any sounds.

IMPORTANT:  Your S.C. Club’s membership year is no longer fixed from January 1st to December 31st of  each year – your membership commences from the date you paid the membership fee, and renews one year later.  

If you do allow your membership to renew then your access to The S.C. Club will continue unchanged.  However, if you do not wish to renew your membership and therefore cancel the auto renewal of your fee payment then you will no longer be able to access any of The S.C. Club’s private Google Drive folders – not even ones that you have contributed to – and you will no longer be able to access The S.C. Club’s ‘The Knowledge’ notebook.  Any tracks that you have uploaded and had accepted to any of The S.C. Club’s private sets within it’s Google Drive account will remain online in their appropriate private sets (and downloadable by current contributors to those sets, who can still use your audio according to the terms and conditions laid out in this legal agreement) unless you specifically ask for your audio to be removed (by means of an e-mail to The S.C. Club).  If you do ask for any of your tracks to be removed from any of The S.C. Club’s private sets then they will be removed by The S.C. Club after a one month notice period.  This is so that The S.C. Club can notify the other contributors to the set from which the audio is being removed and give them a fair chance to download a copy before the end of the one month notice period.  Anyone who has legitimately downloaded your audio before it is removed will still be permitted to use your audio in the way defined by the terms of the license agreement which is laid out below.  Likewise, any audio you have legitimately downloaded whilst a member of The S.C. Club can continue to be used in the way defined by the terms of the license agreement which is laid out below.  If you request any entries you have made in The S.C. Club’s ‘The Knowledge’ notebook to be removed then The S.C. Club will endeavour to do this as completely and thoroughly as possible but is under no obligation to do so and is not culpable if any of your entries are not easily found and hence not removed.

The license agreement is thus:

You, the Contributor, hereby agree that by uploading audio to be included in a particular themed set in The Sound Collectors’ Club’s Google Drive account (herein referred to as ‘The S.C. Club’), via your own personal Google Drive upload folder, you are permitting any other contributors, who have uploaded audio which is included in that same set, to download and use your contributed audio royalty-free and howsoever they please, whether commercially or non-commercially, domestically or internationally or anywhere in the entire universe, and as many times as they like and, likewise, you are permitted to download any audio you are given access to within The S.C. Club and to use this audio howsoever you please, whether commercially or non-commercially, domestically or internationally or anywhere in the entire universe, and as many times as you like – EXCEPT for the following restriction:

– You, the Contributor, are not permitted to distribute, share or license or sell any of the audio which has been uploaded to The S.C. Club as the audio itself as it appears and exists within The S.C. Club (except for your own contributions), whether individually or as a sound fx library, whether as any form of hard drive copies or as digital downloads or transfers.  Regarding your own contributions, you may still share that audio but you cannot sell or distribute your own contributions to The S.C. Club in any way that imposes a license upon that audio that could in any way conflict with the terms and license agreement of The S.C. Club.

Audio Specifications:

Files uploaded to The S.C. Club must fulfill the following criteria:

• Files must be of a minimum sampling rate of 48kHz and a minimum bit depth of 24 bit.

You hereby permit The S.C. Club to edit the track name and metadata of any of your uploaded audio when deemed necessary by The S.C. Club.  This does not affect any of the agreements regarding ownership, authorship, copyright and contributors’ responsibilities and liabilities as laid out within this legal agreement.

Concerning copyright – originality and ownership of uploaded audio:

By uploading audio to The S.C. Club, you, the Contributor, hereby declare that the uploaded audio was recorded by you and that you own it exclusively and that you haven’t sold ownership of it to someone else already and that it is not already licensed, for example, on Soundcloud or any other media-sharing website in any form such as, for example, by a Creative Commons agreement.  With regards to this condition, responsibility and liability for any audio found within The S.C. Club lies with the owner of that audio who is identified by Google Drive (the identity of the contributor is identified by Google Drive when any uploading activity occurs).  If it is brought to The S.C. Club’s attention that any audio within The S.C. Club has been uploaded to The S.C. Club by someone who doesn’t have the exclusive right to do so then that audio will be removed from The S.C. Club immediately and the contributor of that audio will no longer have access to the set from which their audio is removed.  The S.C. Club accepts no responsibility or liability for people dishonestly uploading audio that isn’t their property, although The S.C. Club will do everything within it’s power to keep any such material out of The S.C. Club.  The S.C. Club has the right to reject (or delete if the audio has already been accepted) any uploaded audio from The S.C. Club at any point in time should The S.C. Club wish to do so.  Equally, contributors have the right to ask for their uploaded audio to be removed / deleted from The S.C. Club at any point in time should they wish to do so but they must give one month’s notice.  The S.C. Club also has the right to change this legal agreement howsoever and whenever it wishes but obviously you, the Contributor, have the right to demand your audio be removed from The S.C. Club (once again, with one month’s notice) should any such changes not be to your liking.  Accordingly, if you ask for your audio to be removed from The S.C. Club then you will lose access to any and all of The S.C. Club’s themed sets that you no longer have any contributed audio in.

Agreement regarding the browser sets (currently not in use):

By uploading audio to The S.C. Club you permit The S.C. Club to prepare a shorter MP3 (or whatever digital format The S.C. Club may choose) ‘sample’ of your audio using just a section of your original audio, which may be included in a public ‘Browser’ set, within The S.C. Club’s Soundcloud account, which corresponds in name and content to the private themed Google Drive set which contains the original audio you uploaded.  This ‘sample’ of your original audio will not be downloadable but anyone can listen to it online.  The track name given to your original audio will be used to name this sample within the ‘Browser’ set, minus your name.  These samples are not subject to The S.C. Club’s licensing agreement as laid out on this page and must not under any circumstances be used in any form of commercial activity. The browser sets (and ONLY the browser sets) are governed by the standard ‘All Rights Reserved’ Soundcloud license which I will apply to the sample of your audio upon adding it to the Browser sets.  The Browser set samples exist solely to enable the general public, who may or may not be members of The S.C. Club,  to hear samples of the audio contained within The S.C. Club’s private sets within The S.C. Club’s Google Drive account.

If you do not want a sample of your audio to appear within such a ‘Browser’ set then unfortunately your original audio cannot be accepted into (or will have to be removed from) any of the private sets within The S.C. Club’s Google Drive account.